Interview with Duncan Tucker, Transamerica [writer and director]

Of all possible subjects, travel is the most difficult for an artist, as it is the easiest for a journalist. - W.H. Auden

This is what Duncan Tucker wants you to know about his first feature film Transamerica: “The movie is not about transsexuality. To me, it’s one of the most subversive things about it. People say, ‘Oh, it’s that movie about a tranny.’ But it’s not about transsexuality; it’s a movie about family and a movie about growing up. The main character happens to be a trans woman. That comes in a little bit here and there unavoidably, but it’s not in every scene. It’s not even in most scenes. It’s in a few scenes - the issues of her transsexuality. It’s about her struggling to accomplish her dream and about her learning to love somebody and to care about somebody.”

The first scene in Transamerica (heightened with music from an African battle chant) paints a portrait of Bree Osbourne, a cold cold woman. “She’s such an embattled figure when we first meet her. She’s going to win. She’s so determined, but she’s walled off by layers of stone that she’s built up to protect herself. She’s been hurt so much in her life and she’s lost friends and jobs and family. It’s monumental what it takes to rip down the fortress around her heart that she’s built. That journey is like a campaign, isn’t it? It’s been a long time since I’ve thought of this.”

It probably has. Transamerica was released in 2005 after being picked up by the Weinsteins. It debuted to rave reviews and was rewarded with a Golden Globe for Felicity Huffman’s poignant performance.

“I took some time off after Transamerica because I became a Dad, a single dad. I guess maybe Transamerica was predictive in a way. I just realized that I wanted to do that. I took a year and a half off from even thinking about movies. Little did I know, not knowing the movie business – when Transamerica was in theatres and hot and I was getting offers, in a way it would have been sane for me to say ‘Okay, I’ll do this, and I’ll do that’ and line up three more movies, but instead I was saying, ‘I don’t want to think about it now. Leave me alone; I’m going to go have a kid. I’ll be back.’ Now I’m back and it’s fine. Doors are open, but I do have to do a little more singing and dancing for people to see that I might be smart and I might be talented. In this business the memory is short.”

Despite Hollywood’s fickle disposition, an epic journey - a quest inspired by redemption - often proves timeless in a city that craves moral fiber. “I look back on it now, and don’t really know if I consciously knew what I was doing. I knew that it was viscerally exciting to me when I would make decisions or make discoveries, but I look at it from an analytic perspective now, and I think ‘wow’ she did have a quest. She had this goal; it’s not a goal that we generally see in movies. She wants to change her sex. That’s her golden treasure at the end of the rainbow. But, then a barrier comes up and she has to get rid of the obstacle. Get rid of the obstacle! But what is the obstacle? The boy becomes a treasure in its own right, to her. Your typical Hollywood structure would have been ‘I have to choose between spending my savings on my operation and spending my savings on getting my son back right away’. I said ‘I’m not gonna do that. I’m not gonna do that. That’s not real. That’s fucked up basics from Development 101. I thought, let her have her dream, but it just isn’t the happiest day of her life, like she thought it would be.”

It definitely wasn’t your typical Hollywood structure.

“And yet it’s tight. I tried to make it tightly controlled, like a sonnet. I tried to give it a music. It builds, and the dynamical changes when there’s something exciting, then you have a more intimate scene and it keeps having to build and build and build and then EXPLODE in the end. The journey that they go across – the wild changing landscape of America is as it should be in a road movie, and the best road movies, I think, are a metaphor for the journey that’s going on inside them as their hearts are opening up and their notions are being challenged and torn asunder. They’re learning new things just as they’re seeing new country.”

The piece of paper with all my questions tries to fly away from me because of the damn Santa Anas. I keep trying to catch it. Duncan looks up to tell me, like a friend, but sort of like a laid-back parent, “Put your water on it.” I tell him it will get wet and refuse to listen, like a rebellious child. But we’re at the bottom of my list, so it doesn’t really matter.